Letter to the Editor: Writer doesn’t know what life in Israel is like

Published 2:23 pm, Friday, March 4, 2016

Photo: Journal Register Co.

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Photo: Journal Register Co.

Letter to the Editor: Writer doesn’t know what life in Israel is like

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Steven Steinberg, in his Feb. 26 op-ed, said he is opposed to Israel being a Jewish state. If there were no Jewish state, where would Jews in distress go? Thousands of French Jews are leaving, many more are thinking about it. The United States doesn’t open its door to everyone who knocks.

Steinberg says American Jews want to live in peace while Israeli Jews want to believe that the whole world is at war against them.

Does Steinberg have any understanding of the forces that forged the Israeli psyche? Has he ever had to check the news before deciding whether it’s safe to go out? Has he ever lived in a country where the government, out of concern that the economy might collapse, ran war-time television commercials urging people to go to work despite being under Hamas missile fire? Does he know what it’s like to be an emergency room doctor in Beersheva checking the wounded coming from Gaza to see whether his son is among them? Or the Israeli soldier assigned to inform bereaved families that their children had been killed, who said at her own son’s funeral that she knew in her heart that the day would come when she would be in their shoes?

No one wants to live in peace more than Israelis. But there is nothing that Israel can do to create peace with the Palestinians. We’ve tried giving them land and that didn’t work — after the pullout from Gaza, the Palestinians used the evacuated land as a launching pad for attacks on us.

Israel is a small country in a hostile region. Non-state actors and countries in the Middle East have gone to war with Israel numerous times and some regional leaders have repeatedly threatened to exterminate Israel. Israel would be foolish not to take those threats seriously.